Reference no: EM133039970
ETHICAL DILEMMA - A beautiful deal?
You work as a procurement manager for a large European retailing company that is in the process of revamping its line of own-label cosmetics. This line is important to your business, and as your company has expanded, own-label cosmetics have gradually occupied an increasingly prominent role in the product mix in stores.
Your existing supplier of own-label products, Beauty To Go, has supplied your company for ten years and over two-thirds of its business is accounted for by your company's orders. You have a good relationship with the account manager who, like yourself, has been in her role for a number of years, and has become a good friend.
As you are considering how to proceed with the revamp, a competing supplier, Rela cosmetics, contacts you offering virtually identical products to Beauty To Go, with what appear to be equivalent supply arrangements, but at a slightly lower price per unit. Over a year this would work out to approximately $200,000 savings - not a huge sum for your company, but quite a substantial saving of about 2% on your costs. In addition, Real Cosmetics also highlights in its sales pitch that it goes well beyond the industry standard for non-animal testing of the products ingredients- again, a significant improvement over what Beauty To Go has been offering you.
After reading the above case, answer the following questions:
- What are the ethical issues at stake in this situation?
- How would you proceed in this situation?